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Exodus 28:30
Verse
Context
The Breastpiece
29Whenever Aaron enters the Holy Place, he shall bear the names of the sons of Israel over his heart on the breastpiece of judgment, as a continual reminder before the LORD. 30And place the Urim and Thummim in the breastpiece of judgment, so that they will also be over Aaron’s heart whenever he comes before the LORD. Aaron will continually carry the judgment of the sons of Israel over his heart before the LORD.
Sermons
Summary
Commentary
- Adam Clarke
- Keil-Delitzsch
- Jamieson-Fausset-Brown
- John Gill
- Tyndale
Adam Clarke Bible Commentary
Thou shalt put in the breastplate - the Urim and the Thummim - What these were has, I believe, never yet been discovered. 1. They are nowhere described. 2. There is no direction given to Moses or any other how to make them. 3. Whatever they were, they do not appear to have been made on this occasion. 4. If they were the work of man at all, they must have been the articles in the ancient tabernacle, matters used by the patriarchs, and not here particularly described, because well known. 5. It is probable that nothing material is designed. This is the opinion of some of the Jewish doctors. Rabbi Menachem on this chapter says, "The Urim and Thummim were not the work of the artificer; neither had the artificers or the congregation of Israel in them any work or any voluntary offering; but they were a mystery delivered to Moses from the mouth of God, or they were the work of God himself, or a measure of the Holy Spirit." 6. That God was often consulted by Urim and Thummim, is sufficiently evident from several scriptures; but how or in what manner he was thus consulted appears in none. 7. This mode of consultation, whatever it was, does not appear to have been in use from the consecration of Solomon's temple to the time of its destruction; and after its destruction it is never once mentioned. Hence the Jews say that the five following things, which were in the first temple, were wanting in the second: "1. The ark with the mercy-seat and cherubim; 2. The fire which came down from heaven; 3. The shechinah or Divine presence; 4. The Holy Spirit, i.e., the gift of prophecy; and 5. The Urim and Thummim." 8. As the word אורים urim signifies Lights, and the word תמים tummim, Perfections, they were probably designed to point out the light - the abundant information, in spiritual things, afforded by the wonderful revelation which God made of himself by and under the Law; and the perfection - entire holiness and strict conformity to himself, which this dispensation required, and which are introduced and accomplished by that dispensation of light and truth, the Gospel, which was prefigured and pointed out by the law and its sacrifices, etc.; and in this light the subject has been viewed by the Vulgate, where the words are translated doctrina et veritas, doctrine and truth - a system of teaching proceeding from truth itself. The Septuagint translate the original by δηλωσις και αληθεια, the manifestation and the truth; meaning probably the manifestation which God made of himself to Moses and the Israelites, and the truth which he had revealed to them, of which this breastplate should be a continual memorial. All the other versions express nearly the same things, and all refer to intellectual and spiritual subjects, such as light, truth, manifestation, doctrine, perfection, etc., etc., not one of them supposing that any thing material is intended. The Samaritan text is however different; it adds here a whole clause not found in the Hebrew: veasitha eth haurim veeth hattummim, Thou shalt make the Urim and the Thummim. If this reading be admitted, the Urim and Thummim were manufactured on this occasion as well as the other articles. However it be, they are indescribable and unknown. The manner in which the Jews suppose that the inquiry was made by Urim and Thummim is the following: "When they inquired the priest stood with his face before the ark, and he that inquired stood behind him with his face to the back of the priest; and the inquirer said, Shall I go up? or, Shall I not go up? And forthwith the Holy Ghost came upon the priest, and he beheld the breastplate, and saw therein by the vision of prophecy, Go up, or Go not up, in the letters which showed forth themselves upon the breastplate before his face." See Num 27:18, Num 27:21; Jdg 1:1; Jdg 20:18, Jdg 20:28; Sa1 23:9-12; Sa1 28:6; and see Ainsworth. It was the letters that formed the names of the twelve tribes upon the breastplate, which the Jews suppose were used in a miraculous way to give answers to the inquirers. Thus when David consulted the Lord whether he should go into a city of Judea, three letters which constituted the word עלה aloh, Go, rose up or became prominent in the names on the breastplate; ע ain, from the name of Simeon, ל lamed from the name of Levi, and ה he from the name of Judah. But this supposition is without proof. Among the Egyptians, a breastplate something like that of the Jewish high-priest was worn by the president of the courts of justice. Diodorus Siculus has these words: Εφορει δ' οὑτος περι τον τραχηλον εκ χρυσης ἁλυσεως ηρτημενον ζωδιον των πολυτελων λιθων ὁ προσηγορευον ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑΝ. "He bore about his neck a golden chain, at which hung an image set about with or composed of precious stones, which was called Truth." - Bib. Hist., lib. i., chap. 75, p. 225. And he farther adds, "that as soon as the president put this gold chain about his neck, the legal proceedings commenced, but not before. And that when the case of the plaintiff and defendant had been fully and fairly heard, the president turned the image of truth, which was hung to the golden chain round his neck, toward the person whose cause was found to be just," by which he seemed to intimate that truth was on his side. Aelian, in his Hist. Var., lib. xxxiv., gives the same account. "The chief justice or president," he says, "was always a priest, of a venerable age and acknowledged probity. Ειχε δε και αγαλμα περι τον αυχενα εκ σαπφειρου λιθου, και εκαλειτο αγαλμα ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ. And he had an image which was called Truth engraved on a sapphire, and hung about his neck with a gold chain." Peter du Val mentions a mummy which he saw at Cairo, in Egypt, round the neck of which was a chain, having a golden plate suspended, which lay on the breast of the person, and on which was engraved the figure of a bird. This person was supposed to have been one of the supreme judges; and in all likelihood the bird, of what kind he does not mention, was the emblem of truth, justice, or innocence. I have now before me paintings, taken on the spot by a native Chinese, of the different courts in China where criminal causes were tried. In these the judge always appears with a piece of embroidery on his breast, on which a white bird of the ardea or heron kind is represented, with expanded wings. All these seem to have been derived from the same source, both among the Hebrews, the Egyptians, and the Chinese. And it is certainly not impossible that the two latter might have borrowed the notion and use of the breastplate of judgment from the Hebrews, as it was in use among them long before we have any account of its use either among the Egyptians or Chinese. The different mandarins have a breast-piece of this kind.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary
Into this choshen Moses was to put the Urim and Thummim, that they might be upon his heart when he came before Jehovah, and that he might thus constantly bear the right (mishpat) of the children of Israel upon his heart before Jehovah. It is evident at once from this, that the Urim and Thummim were to bring the right of the children of Israel before the Lord, and that the breastplate was called choshen mishpat because the Urim and Thummim were in it. Moreover it also follows from the expression אל נתתּ, both here and in Lev 8:8, that the Urim and Thummim were not only distinct from the choshen, but were placed in it, and not merely suspended upon it, as Knobel supposes. For although the lxx have adopted the rendering ἐπιτιθέναι ἐπί, the phrase is constantly used to denote putting or laying one thing into another, and never (not even in Sa1 6:8 and Sa2 11:16) merely placing one thing upon or against another. For this, על נתן is the expression invariably used in the account before us (cf. Exo 28:14 and Exo 28:23.). What the Urim and Thummim really were, cannot be determined with certainty, either from the names themselves, or from any other circumstances connected with them. (Note: The leading opinions and the most important writings upon the subject are given in my Bibl. Archaeol. 39, note 9.) The lxx render the words δήλωσις (or δῆλος) καὶ ἀλήθεια, i.e., revelation and truth. This expresses with tolerable accuracy the meaning of Urim (אוּרים light, illumination), but Thummim (תּמּים) means integritas, inviolability, perfection, and not ἀλήθεια. The rendering given by Symm. and Theod., viz., φωτισμοὶ καὶ τελειώσεις, illumination and completion, is much better; and there is no good ground for giving up this rendering in favour of that of the lxx, since the analogy between the Urim and Thummim and the ἄγαλμα of sapphire-stones, or the ζώδιον of precious stones, which was worn by the Egyptian high priest suspended by a golden chain, and called ἀλήθεια (Aelian. var. hist. 14, 34; Diod. Sic. i. 48, 75), sufficiently explains the rendering ἀλήθεια, which the lxx have given to Thummim, but it by no means warrants Knobel's conclusion, that the Hebrews had adopted the Egyptian names along with the thing itself. The words are therefore to be explained from the Coptic. The Urim and Thummim are analogous, it is true, to the εἰκῶν τῆς ἀληθείας, which the Egyptian ἀρχιδικαστής hung round his neck, but they are by no means identical with it, or to be regarded as two figures which were a symbolical representation of revelation and truth. If Aaron was to bring the right of the children of Israel before Jehovah in the breastplate that was placed upon his breast with the Urim and Thummim, the latter, if they were intended to represent anything, could only be symbolical of the right or rightful condition of Israel. But the words do not warrant any such conclusion. If the Urim and Thummim had been intended to represent any really existing thing, their nature, or the mode of preparing them, would certainly have been described. Now, if we refer to Num 27:21, where Joshua as the commander of the nation is instructed to go to the high priest Eleazar, that the latter may inquire before Jehovah, through the right of Urim, how the whole congregation should walk and act, we can draw no other conclusion, than that the Urim and Thummim are to be regarded as a certain medium, given by the Lord to His people, through which, whenever the congregation required divine illumination to guide its actions, that illumination was guaranteed, and by means of which the rights of Israel, when called in question or endangered, were to be restored, and that this medium was bound up with the official dress of the high priest, though its precise character can no longer be determined. Consequently the Urim and Thummim did not represent the illumination and right of Israel, but were merely a promise of these, a pledge that the Lord would maintain the rights of His people, and give them through the high priest the illumination requisite for their protection. Aaron was to bear the children of Israel upon his heart, in the precious stones to be worn upon his breast with the names of the twelve tribes. The heart, according to the biblical view, is the centre of the spiritual life, - not merely of the willing, desiring, thinking life, but of the emotional life, as the seat of the feelings and affections (see Delitzsch bibl. Psychologie, pp. 203ff.). Hence to bear upon the heart does not merely mean to bear in mind, but denotes "that personal intertwining with the life of another, by virtue of which the high priest, as Philo expresses it, was τοῦ σύμπαντος ἔθνους συγγενὴς καὶ ἀγχιστεὺς κοινός (Spec. leg. ii. 321), and so stood in the deepest sympathy with those for whom he interceded" (Oehler in Herzog's Cycl.). As he entered the holy place with this feeling, and in this attitude, of which the choshen was the symbol, he brought Israel into remembrance before Jehovah that the Lord might accept His people; and when furnished with the Urim and Thummim, he appeared before Jehovah as the advocate of the people's rights, that he might receive for the congregation the illumination required to protect and uphold those rights.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and Thummim--The words signify "lights" and "perfections"; and nothing more is meant than the precious stones of the breastplate already described (compare Exo 39:8-21; Lev 8:8). They received the name because the bearing of them qualified the high priest to consult the divine oracle on all public or national emergencies, by going into the holy place--standing close before the veil and putting his hand upon the Urim and Thummim, he conveyed a petition from the people and asked counsel of God, who, as the Sovereign of Israel, gave response from the midst of His glory. Little, however, is known about them. But it may be remarked that Egyptian judges wore on the breast of their official robes a representation of Justice, and the high priest in Israel long officiated also as a judge; so that some think the Urim and Thummim had a reference to his judicial functions.
John Gill Bible Commentary
And thou shall make the robe of the ephod all of blue. This was a different garment from the ephod, was longer than that, and was under it, and of different materials: that was made of gold, blue, purple, scarlet, and fine linen; this only of linen, and wholly of a blue colour, without any curious figures upon it, as were on that: in Exo 39:22, it is said to be of woven work; it was woven from top to bottom, and had no seam in it: so Josephus says (b),"the coat did not consist of two parts, nor was it sewed upon the shoulder, nor on the side, but was one long piece of woven work;''and such was the seamless coat our Lord Jesus Christ wore, literally understood, Joh 19:23 and both were an emblem of his perfect righteousness, which has nothing of the works of men joined to it, to justify them before God, and make them acceptable to him: for this robe signifies the robe of Christ's righteousness, the best robe; it has its name from a word which signifies prevarication or sin, because it covers the sins of God's people; the matter of it was linen, and so fitly points at the fine linen, that is the righteousness of the saints, and being blue or sky coloured may denote heaven and happiness, which that entitles to, see Mat 5:20, the Septuagint version calls it a garment down to the feet, using the same word as in Rev 1:13 and fitly agrees with that righteousness with which all Christ's members are covered and justified, Isa 45:24. (b) Antiqu. l. 3. c. 7. sect. 4.
Tyndale Open Study Notes
28:30 The Urim and Thummim (Hebrew terms that might translate as lights [or curses] and perfections) were apparently a pair of stones that were thrown down to get a yes or no answer from God. No physical description of these objects exists; their use is further explained in Num 27:21; Deut 33:8; 1 Sam 28:6; Ezra 2:63; and Neh 7:65.
Exodus 28:30
The Breastpiece
29Whenever Aaron enters the Holy Place, he shall bear the names of the sons of Israel over his heart on the breastpiece of judgment, as a continual reminder before the LORD. 30And place the Urim and Thummim in the breastpiece of judgment, so that they will also be over Aaron’s heart whenever he comes before the LORD. Aaron will continually carry the judgment of the sons of Israel over his heart before the LORD.
- Scripture
- Sermons
- Commentary
- Adam Clarke
- Keil-Delitzsch
- Jamieson-Fausset-Brown
- John Gill
- Tyndale
Adam Clarke Bible Commentary
Thou shalt put in the breastplate - the Urim and the Thummim - What these were has, I believe, never yet been discovered. 1. They are nowhere described. 2. There is no direction given to Moses or any other how to make them. 3. Whatever they were, they do not appear to have been made on this occasion. 4. If they were the work of man at all, they must have been the articles in the ancient tabernacle, matters used by the patriarchs, and not here particularly described, because well known. 5. It is probable that nothing material is designed. This is the opinion of some of the Jewish doctors. Rabbi Menachem on this chapter says, "The Urim and Thummim were not the work of the artificer; neither had the artificers or the congregation of Israel in them any work or any voluntary offering; but they were a mystery delivered to Moses from the mouth of God, or they were the work of God himself, or a measure of the Holy Spirit." 6. That God was often consulted by Urim and Thummim, is sufficiently evident from several scriptures; but how or in what manner he was thus consulted appears in none. 7. This mode of consultation, whatever it was, does not appear to have been in use from the consecration of Solomon's temple to the time of its destruction; and after its destruction it is never once mentioned. Hence the Jews say that the five following things, which were in the first temple, were wanting in the second: "1. The ark with the mercy-seat and cherubim; 2. The fire which came down from heaven; 3. The shechinah or Divine presence; 4. The Holy Spirit, i.e., the gift of prophecy; and 5. The Urim and Thummim." 8. As the word אורים urim signifies Lights, and the word תמים tummim, Perfections, they were probably designed to point out the light - the abundant information, in spiritual things, afforded by the wonderful revelation which God made of himself by and under the Law; and the perfection - entire holiness and strict conformity to himself, which this dispensation required, and which are introduced and accomplished by that dispensation of light and truth, the Gospel, which was prefigured and pointed out by the law and its sacrifices, etc.; and in this light the subject has been viewed by the Vulgate, where the words are translated doctrina et veritas, doctrine and truth - a system of teaching proceeding from truth itself. The Septuagint translate the original by δηλωσις και αληθεια, the manifestation and the truth; meaning probably the manifestation which God made of himself to Moses and the Israelites, and the truth which he had revealed to them, of which this breastplate should be a continual memorial. All the other versions express nearly the same things, and all refer to intellectual and spiritual subjects, such as light, truth, manifestation, doctrine, perfection, etc., etc., not one of them supposing that any thing material is intended. The Samaritan text is however different; it adds here a whole clause not found in the Hebrew: veasitha eth haurim veeth hattummim, Thou shalt make the Urim and the Thummim. If this reading be admitted, the Urim and Thummim were manufactured on this occasion as well as the other articles. However it be, they are indescribable and unknown. The manner in which the Jews suppose that the inquiry was made by Urim and Thummim is the following: "When they inquired the priest stood with his face before the ark, and he that inquired stood behind him with his face to the back of the priest; and the inquirer said, Shall I go up? or, Shall I not go up? And forthwith the Holy Ghost came upon the priest, and he beheld the breastplate, and saw therein by the vision of prophecy, Go up, or Go not up, in the letters which showed forth themselves upon the breastplate before his face." See Num 27:18, Num 27:21; Jdg 1:1; Jdg 20:18, Jdg 20:28; Sa1 23:9-12; Sa1 28:6; and see Ainsworth. It was the letters that formed the names of the twelve tribes upon the breastplate, which the Jews suppose were used in a miraculous way to give answers to the inquirers. Thus when David consulted the Lord whether he should go into a city of Judea, three letters which constituted the word עלה aloh, Go, rose up or became prominent in the names on the breastplate; ע ain, from the name of Simeon, ל lamed from the name of Levi, and ה he from the name of Judah. But this supposition is without proof. Among the Egyptians, a breastplate something like that of the Jewish high-priest was worn by the president of the courts of justice. Diodorus Siculus has these words: Εφορει δ' οὑτος περι τον τραχηλον εκ χρυσης ἁλυσεως ηρτημενον ζωδιον των πολυτελων λιθων ὁ προσηγορευον ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑΝ. "He bore about his neck a golden chain, at which hung an image set about with or composed of precious stones, which was called Truth." - Bib. Hist., lib. i., chap. 75, p. 225. And he farther adds, "that as soon as the president put this gold chain about his neck, the legal proceedings commenced, but not before. And that when the case of the plaintiff and defendant had been fully and fairly heard, the president turned the image of truth, which was hung to the golden chain round his neck, toward the person whose cause was found to be just," by which he seemed to intimate that truth was on his side. Aelian, in his Hist. Var., lib. xxxiv., gives the same account. "The chief justice or president," he says, "was always a priest, of a venerable age and acknowledged probity. Ειχε δε και αγαλμα περι τον αυχενα εκ σαπφειρου λιθου, και εκαλειτο αγαλμα ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ. And he had an image which was called Truth engraved on a sapphire, and hung about his neck with a gold chain." Peter du Val mentions a mummy which he saw at Cairo, in Egypt, round the neck of which was a chain, having a golden plate suspended, which lay on the breast of the person, and on which was engraved the figure of a bird. This person was supposed to have been one of the supreme judges; and in all likelihood the bird, of what kind he does not mention, was the emblem of truth, justice, or innocence. I have now before me paintings, taken on the spot by a native Chinese, of the different courts in China where criminal causes were tried. In these the judge always appears with a piece of embroidery on his breast, on which a white bird of the ardea or heron kind is represented, with expanded wings. All these seem to have been derived from the same source, both among the Hebrews, the Egyptians, and the Chinese. And it is certainly not impossible that the two latter might have borrowed the notion and use of the breastplate of judgment from the Hebrews, as it was in use among them long before we have any account of its use either among the Egyptians or Chinese. The different mandarins have a breast-piece of this kind.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch Old Testament Commentary
Into this choshen Moses was to put the Urim and Thummim, that they might be upon his heart when he came before Jehovah, and that he might thus constantly bear the right (mishpat) of the children of Israel upon his heart before Jehovah. It is evident at once from this, that the Urim and Thummim were to bring the right of the children of Israel before the Lord, and that the breastplate was called choshen mishpat because the Urim and Thummim were in it. Moreover it also follows from the expression אל נתתּ, both here and in Lev 8:8, that the Urim and Thummim were not only distinct from the choshen, but were placed in it, and not merely suspended upon it, as Knobel supposes. For although the lxx have adopted the rendering ἐπιτιθέναι ἐπί, the phrase is constantly used to denote putting or laying one thing into another, and never (not even in Sa1 6:8 and Sa2 11:16) merely placing one thing upon or against another. For this, על נתן is the expression invariably used in the account before us (cf. Exo 28:14 and Exo 28:23.). What the Urim and Thummim really were, cannot be determined with certainty, either from the names themselves, or from any other circumstances connected with them. (Note: The leading opinions and the most important writings upon the subject are given in my Bibl. Archaeol. 39, note 9.) The lxx render the words δήλωσις (or δῆλος) καὶ ἀλήθεια, i.e., revelation and truth. This expresses with tolerable accuracy the meaning of Urim (אוּרים light, illumination), but Thummim (תּמּים) means integritas, inviolability, perfection, and not ἀλήθεια. The rendering given by Symm. and Theod., viz., φωτισμοὶ καὶ τελειώσεις, illumination and completion, is much better; and there is no good ground for giving up this rendering in favour of that of the lxx, since the analogy between the Urim and Thummim and the ἄγαλμα of sapphire-stones, or the ζώδιον of precious stones, which was worn by the Egyptian high priest suspended by a golden chain, and called ἀλήθεια (Aelian. var. hist. 14, 34; Diod. Sic. i. 48, 75), sufficiently explains the rendering ἀλήθεια, which the lxx have given to Thummim, but it by no means warrants Knobel's conclusion, that the Hebrews had adopted the Egyptian names along with the thing itself. The words are therefore to be explained from the Coptic. The Urim and Thummim are analogous, it is true, to the εἰκῶν τῆς ἀληθείας, which the Egyptian ἀρχιδικαστής hung round his neck, but they are by no means identical with it, or to be regarded as two figures which were a symbolical representation of revelation and truth. If Aaron was to bring the right of the children of Israel before Jehovah in the breastplate that was placed upon his breast with the Urim and Thummim, the latter, if they were intended to represent anything, could only be symbolical of the right or rightful condition of Israel. But the words do not warrant any such conclusion. If the Urim and Thummim had been intended to represent any really existing thing, their nature, or the mode of preparing them, would certainly have been described. Now, if we refer to Num 27:21, where Joshua as the commander of the nation is instructed to go to the high priest Eleazar, that the latter may inquire before Jehovah, through the right of Urim, how the whole congregation should walk and act, we can draw no other conclusion, than that the Urim and Thummim are to be regarded as a certain medium, given by the Lord to His people, through which, whenever the congregation required divine illumination to guide its actions, that illumination was guaranteed, and by means of which the rights of Israel, when called in question or endangered, were to be restored, and that this medium was bound up with the official dress of the high priest, though its precise character can no longer be determined. Consequently the Urim and Thummim did not represent the illumination and right of Israel, but were merely a promise of these, a pledge that the Lord would maintain the rights of His people, and give them through the high priest the illumination requisite for their protection. Aaron was to bear the children of Israel upon his heart, in the precious stones to be worn upon his breast with the names of the twelve tribes. The heart, according to the biblical view, is the centre of the spiritual life, - not merely of the willing, desiring, thinking life, but of the emotional life, as the seat of the feelings and affections (see Delitzsch bibl. Psychologie, pp. 203ff.). Hence to bear upon the heart does not merely mean to bear in mind, but denotes "that personal intertwining with the life of another, by virtue of which the high priest, as Philo expresses it, was τοῦ σύμπαντος ἔθνους συγγενὴς καὶ ἀγχιστεὺς κοινός (Spec. leg. ii. 321), and so stood in the deepest sympathy with those for whom he interceded" (Oehler in Herzog's Cycl.). As he entered the holy place with this feeling, and in this attitude, of which the choshen was the symbol, he brought Israel into remembrance before Jehovah that the Lord might accept His people; and when furnished with the Urim and Thummim, he appeared before Jehovah as the advocate of the people's rights, that he might receive for the congregation the illumination required to protect and uphold those rights.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and Thummim--The words signify "lights" and "perfections"; and nothing more is meant than the precious stones of the breastplate already described (compare Exo 39:8-21; Lev 8:8). They received the name because the bearing of them qualified the high priest to consult the divine oracle on all public or national emergencies, by going into the holy place--standing close before the veil and putting his hand upon the Urim and Thummim, he conveyed a petition from the people and asked counsel of God, who, as the Sovereign of Israel, gave response from the midst of His glory. Little, however, is known about them. But it may be remarked that Egyptian judges wore on the breast of their official robes a representation of Justice, and the high priest in Israel long officiated also as a judge; so that some think the Urim and Thummim had a reference to his judicial functions.
John Gill Bible Commentary
And thou shall make the robe of the ephod all of blue. This was a different garment from the ephod, was longer than that, and was under it, and of different materials: that was made of gold, blue, purple, scarlet, and fine linen; this only of linen, and wholly of a blue colour, without any curious figures upon it, as were on that: in Exo 39:22, it is said to be of woven work; it was woven from top to bottom, and had no seam in it: so Josephus says (b),"the coat did not consist of two parts, nor was it sewed upon the shoulder, nor on the side, but was one long piece of woven work;''and such was the seamless coat our Lord Jesus Christ wore, literally understood, Joh 19:23 and both were an emblem of his perfect righteousness, which has nothing of the works of men joined to it, to justify them before God, and make them acceptable to him: for this robe signifies the robe of Christ's righteousness, the best robe; it has its name from a word which signifies prevarication or sin, because it covers the sins of God's people; the matter of it was linen, and so fitly points at the fine linen, that is the righteousness of the saints, and being blue or sky coloured may denote heaven and happiness, which that entitles to, see Mat 5:20, the Septuagint version calls it a garment down to the feet, using the same word as in Rev 1:13 and fitly agrees with that righteousness with which all Christ's members are covered and justified, Isa 45:24. (b) Antiqu. l. 3. c. 7. sect. 4.
Tyndale Open Study Notes
28:30 The Urim and Thummim (Hebrew terms that might translate as lights [or curses] and perfections) were apparently a pair of stones that were thrown down to get a yes or no answer from God. No physical description of these objects exists; their use is further explained in Num 27:21; Deut 33:8; 1 Sam 28:6; Ezra 2:63; and Neh 7:65.